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Fords' biases prejudice TO's future: Hume

Polls tell us transit is the hot issue this municipal election, as it should be. But what’s at stake now is Toronto’s status as one of the planet’s great cities of tolerance, maybe the shining example of a city where pluralism and acceptance are practised.

Torontonians have always known that they don’t live up to the billing, but it’s still something to which the larger community aspires. Or so we like to believe.

Certainly, as a city (and country) of immigrants, every single one of us — members of First Nations excepted — has good reason to hope that just as Toronto was open to us, it will be open to others.

Not everyone agrees, of course, and that has always been the case. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, all forms of bigotry are alive and well in this and every other city. Indeed, they are enshrined in many of its institutions, religious, cultural and social.

What has changed, however, is that the bigots now feel they, too, have a right to political representation — which they do, but not as bigots. Still their demands have become part of the discussion in Toronto, and if not entirely acceptable, increasingly normal.

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The point was made most recently when a proud member of Ford Nation stood up at mayoral debate this week and yelled at Olivia Chow to “go home to China.”

No one need defend the Asian contribution to this city, and Doug Ford wasted no time distancing himself from the incident.

More than anything, this new intolerance is Rob Ford’s legacy, and something, it seems, Brother Doug is determined to continue.

Ford's refusal to commit to marching in the Pride parade — an unwritten civic duty for all chief magistrates in Toronto since Barbara Hall, two decades ago — revealed his unwillingness to alienate the base any more than absolutely necessary.

But it also confirmed the Fords’ failure to grasp that the mayor’s power in a system where council reigns supreme is largely symbolic. Though the mayor is the only municipal politician who speaks for the whole city, the Fords have never managed to lift themselves from the local mire.

And certainly during Brother Rob’s dismal term as mayor of Toronto, his apparent feelings about women, minorities and gays were made clear in any number of ways, most spectacularly on video.

Lest anyone dismiss inclusivity as mere political correctness, the truth is that the one thing that distinguishes Toronto from any number of second-rung cities around the world is its reputation for being a haven of tolerance and integration. By almost any other measure — housing, transit, infrastructure, congestion, governance, environment, employment, productivity — Toronto falls short.

There is quite literally nothing else about this city that stands out in a global context. Lose that and Toronto becomes nothing more than a polite Cleveland.

That’s why the most important decision former mayor Mel Lastman ever made was to attend Pride Day in 1998. Luckily for him, his family talked him into going; the Fords have no such advantage.

In a highly mobile world run by multinational corporate barons, cities must either compete against one another or get sucked into the race to the bottom now destroying so many U.S. communities.

That’s why Rob and Doug Ford do so much damage to Toronto when, among other things, they prevaricate about Pride. Their followers, emboldened by four years of unabashed ignorance and caring for little more than gravy trains and potholes, remain oblivious.

Just because they live in Toronto doesn’t mean they live in a city.

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